


I Want To Say I'm Sorry [For Stuff I Haven't Done Yet]

by Negansplumbusinmyrumham



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (Comics), The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aged-Up Character(s), Animal Death, Bottom Carl Grimes, Cycle of Abuse, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Extremely Dubious Consent, Guilty Negan, Hurt Carl Grimes, Hurt/Comfort, Its Negan So Very Grey Consent, Kidnapping, M/M, Manipulative Negan, Mostly hurt, Multi, Negan Trying To Be Nurturing, Not a romance, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Torture, Physical Abuse, Possessive Negan (Walking Dead), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Drama, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sad Carl Grimes, Sexual Abuse, Slavery, Sweet Negan (Walking Dead), Torture, Underage Rape/Non-con, animal cruelty, carl is 18, carl x oc, csa flashbacks, idk how to be any more clear, lovebombing, not smut, shower blowjob, some veryvlight fluffy Carl/Sophia, this story is intended to be hard to read, tortured carl, traumatized carl, vent art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2018-11-04 14:03:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 20
Words: 15,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10992426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Negansplumbusinmyrumham/pseuds/Negansplumbusinmyrumham
Summary: "He was a savior: a savior: a savior, the word looped around his brain like a noose. A savior. He was Carl’s savior, he rationalized, not just another interchangeable predator in the boy’s long history as prey."





	1. Idylls Of The King

Negan hated dealing with nomads. In general they were shifty, held back far more than their share and had a habit of never being in the agreed-upon place when collection day came around. This group, though, they were the worst. They called themselves the claimers, entitled pricks who smelled worse than the roamers, so bad that Negan couldn’t help but take it as a personal offence. Fuckers knew he was coming, should have figured out some way to clean up. 

It was time to bust heads. It’d been time to bust heads for over a month. He’d been procrastinating the task of tainting Lucile with their stench. Now he hid her in his open jacket, protecting her from the icy rain and soaking his undershirt in the process. His men had pinned down their camp, ordered to loot it dry and hold off any executions until he and his deadly babydoll arrived. 

\---

The group was tiny, ten well-fed men without a gun between them. Their weapons, mostly knives, were rounded up on what must have once been an expensive dining room table. All ten men were seated, sheepish and defeated, on leather sofas in a sunken den. Simon was the first to approach him, beaming with pride under that stupid mustache. 

The facial hair had started as a joke after some scouts came across a completely undisturbed adult novelty store. The place had a surprisingly well-stocked food selection, such a sudden bounty in one of the worst winters they’d ever faced that nobody seemed to mind how everything was shaped like cartoon cocks. In fact, that was the run that earned Simon his promotion; in addition to a few comically ancient magazines, he’d retrieved and presented his great leader with a 5lb hunk of foil-wrapped milk chocolate in the shape of a vulva. Now Negan knew he’d never recognize his right hand man without the lip-broom, inspired by the magazines. It was good, he thought, to be able to joke when everything had fallen to shit. 

“Was twelve,” Simon reported. “Put down two. Davidson’s wounded but he’s fine, being a pussy about it is all. He knows we found Vicodin.”  
“Give him one.” Negan laughed. “Bastards were harder to find than the dick on a lizard. He’s earned it.”  
Simon’s smile faded some. “You gonna take care of the rest of them or-”  
“I’ll see what they have to say.”

\---

The Claimers weren’t saying much, at least nothing interesting. They denied there were any women or children. One of them couldn’t have been older than 15 or 16, an angry little blonde with half of his nose missing and poorly reconstructed, one cheek made fuller than the other by a web of scar tissue. Then again, it was hard to tell with the ones who were small when it all started. They didn’t grow right, the frames of children with the faces of men. 

He was deciding who to kill when Simon called him outside.   
“It’s fuckin’ raining!” He called back.  
The voice from outside replied, “I think you’ll wanna see this.”  
He groaned, motioned for the weird looking blonde kid to follow.  
“Any shit-” He didn’t have the mental energy to finish the threat, but assume it was understood. 

\---

Negan stood outside the chainlink pen that had been fixed to the side of house, trying to make sense of that he was seeing. He mumbled, “Jesus H Fuck.”

At first, he thought it was a roamer. Roamers didn’t flinch, though, and this thing was cowering. It was male and naked, blue-lipped, trembling. The body was emaciated, mutilated with deep crevasses of scar tissue that rerouted the rain and gave the illusion that his back had been eroded by rivers. Bony wrists were bound with plastic and anchored to a steak in the ground. There were notches in his ankles from where the tendons hadn’t just been cut but were carved out in wedges. His face was obscured by a cloth bandage, head draped with long brown hair. 

The only explanation the blonde youth offered was “That’s Carl.”

\---

The men inside offered little more clarification, other than that he belonged to an older, bearded man named Joe and wasn’t anybody’s son. The only other information they gave was that, in exchange for one bag of rice back, Negan was free to take him.  
“Fuck would I want with him, kid’s half dead.” He sneered.  
Joe snickered, and it all clicked into place.  
“Oh! Oh, gotcha.” He found himself strangely embarrassed. “Yeah? Shit, I don’t really go for boys. No offence, I’m more into pussy.”  
“Got pussy back at your compound?” Joe pried.  
Negan thought sadly for a moment about Sherry and the other wives. A flue went around right after the last snow, and he learned a hard lesson about keeping all his women in the same quarters. He hadn’t realized how attached he’d been until he buried them, and then felt stupid and guilty for weeks. Not about them dying, that was bound to happen in this world, but he wasn’t supposed to care.  
“Used to.” He answered, and unbelievably, he was considering the offer.   
“Listen buddy,” Joe was relaxed, chummy. He had a sort of a used-car-salesman vibe. “World’s been over for a long time, now. It don’t make a man anything but a man to keep his bed warm.”  
“Fair enough.” He picked up Lucille and headed back out to the yard while his men loaded the last of the supplies onto their trucks.


	2. Save Everything Not Nailed Down

Carl’s entire boy was numb, and he prayed for the wet ground to swallow him when he heard footsteps. _Not again_ , he begged silently. They’d had him in the upstairs bedroom all night, and since they’d chained him outside in the rain this morning he’d been trying his best to freeze to death. He couldn’t believe that they’d kept him alive this long, that his body could be so broken down and still draw breath as if to spite him. 

\---

The strange man was warm and smelled like cut grass. He lifted Carl into his sturdy arms.  
“There a fucking towel or something I can cover him with?” The stranger demanded of Joe, and Carl held his breath waiting for the older man to draw his knife. Instead, he disappeared and returned with a dingy sheet.  
“It’s clean, just stained.” Joe assure when the stranger glared disapprovingly at a splotch where Carl’s blood had discolored the fabric. 

\---

In the back of a moving truck, the stranger removed his leather jacket and laid it over the shaking youth.  
“Carl?” The stranger asked. “That’s your name?”  
“Yes sir.”  
“Sir!” The stranger’s smile brightened, “Shit, ‘Sir’. You got manners, kid. I like that. Carl. What happened with your face, Carl?”

The memory overwhelmed him. He’d made it almost two full days in the woods, him and another boy. He stopped feeling bad when he couldn’t remember their names, there were too many of them over the years. The boy was young, younger than they usually picked up. The two of them were cornered and Carl had taken the child’s hand, flung both of them in the river to drown because he couldn’t stand the thought of another night listening to that boy scream in the next room. Shane’s swimming lessons kicked in instinctively and, unlike the smaller boy, he couldn't slip easily under the current to escape a broken world.  
When they brought him back to the camp, they were planning to stick a knife up him like he’d seen them do to other runaways. Joe bent him, sobbing, over a boulder at the edge of the campsite and teased with the knife, left thread-thin cuts on his ass and the insides of his thighs and pressing the tip of the blade between his cheeks. He lined it up, gentile but threatening pressure, and told Carl to beg for it. When the boy vomited instead, Joe beat him so bad that the socket of his right eye cracked. 

“Infection, sir.” He mumbled. It wasn’t a lie, the cracked socket swelled and oozed and first he just couldn’t see out of the eye, then it was rotting in his face. Three men had to kneel on his chest while Vin, the doctor of the group, removed it to keep the infection from reaching his brain. 

\---

Carl was calm as he was carried through the compound, still wrapped in the black jacket. He tried not to meet anybody’s eye, tried not to notice a few of the younger men in the crowd whistling and laughing among themselves. He was surprised that he still felt shame, a sting still almost as fresh as the first time. 

He started to cry as soon as they were alone in the bedroom. It was an automatic reaction, triggered by the sight of the bed. It was always worse on a bed, rougher and more personal than what happened on the side of the house. Always so many of them when they brought him up to a bedroom, all the time in the world to hurt him when they were safe behind four walls. On the side of the house it was quicker, mechanical, he could turn his head away focus on the shingles. In the bedroom, they wanted to see his face.


	3. Weightless/Formless/Blameless/Nameless

Negan was startled by the outburst. He stared at the boy in his arms, felt strangely helpless and exhaled through his teeth like he was trying to quiet a baby. When he placed Carl on the mattress, the youth curled in on himself and hid his face in the sheets, one hand raised in pathetic defense.   
“Hey,” He adjusted the jacket to cover Carl again. “Hey, I don’t wanna hurt you.”  
Carl flinched, exhaled more air than Negan thought his fragile body could hold.  
Carl didn’t relax, more like started to go limp, and dropped his hand.  
“I… I know what this is.” He struggle to regulate his breathing. “I know why I’m here.”  
Negan sat down on the edge of the bed, pondering how to frame the situation.  
“Listen,” He finally said. “I shit in a toilette. I shower every other morning. You know what I’m saying? I mean, I’m not a barbarian. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m a bad guy. I do bad things. It’s a bad world, but I’m not…” He bounced his leg. “Understand?”  
Carl shook his head, still glassy-eyed but the tears had stopped falling.  
“Listen, the reality is nobody gets a free ride in this world. Everybody earns their keep.” He paused, laughed little. “You’re 60lbs and you have no ankles. Not many options to contribute, but I’m a civilized man. I won’t force you. I won’t hold you down. We’re gonna be civilized about this.”  
The boy was frozen.  
“We can stop this at any time, I’ll get my bag of rice back and you go back to earning your keep like you did out there. Nod if you understand.”  
Carl nodded.  
He wasn’t deluded enough to mistake it for real consent, but times were getting pretty grey and so he supposed that maybe definitions were getting grey as well.   
“We’ll take it slow.” Negan assured him, lifting away the jacket. The younger man’s body was unimpressive, all the tendon and bones visible like the gears of a faceless clock. “Just wanna look for now, see what we’re working with. Not gonna hurt you.”  
He could see Carl tense up when he said, “Take it off.”  
“What?”  
“The bandage, sit up and take it off.”  
The smaller male rolled over onto his back, propped up with one elbow while the other hand fiddled with the knot. With one knee crossed to cover himself, he looked enough like a girl. Cute, even, until the bandage fell away.  
“Goddamn!” There was a glee behind Negan’s disgust. “Son of a fuck, that’s gross as shit. That’s your skull.”  
He reached out and touched it as Carl’s lip began to tremble. He flinched, barely visible, but corrected himself fast enough that Negan was impressed.  
The older man thumbed at the scar tissue, “You ever get weird with that?” He laughed at a pun he hadn’t made yet. “You give head?”  
Carl started sobbing again and Negan immediately felt guilty. He didn’t think even the claimers were that twisted, but once again he underestimated their depravity. 

\---

Negan’s spare shirt fit Carl like a nightgown. The leader of the Saviors found himself strangely compelled to impress the boy, offered him a dinner of vitamin-enriched fruit gummies shaped like cartoon characters.  
“You remember Loony Toons?” He held out the small package. “Bugs Bunny? Tweet-o Bird?”  
Carl nodded, tore the plastic with his teeth.  
“How old are you anyway, kid?”  
Carl shrugged.  
“How long were you with those guys?”  
“Years.”  
“Fuck’s that mean? Two years? Five? Ten? How many winters, it’s not that hard.” He realized he was raising his voice because the boy stopped eating, eyes widening in terror.  
“Five, maybe. Five or six. I tried not to count.”  
“So then, what’s the last birthday you had? You remember birthdays?” Negan evened his tone.  
“Ten,” he said. “Maybe eleven. That was before the walkers, though.”  
“Those guys pick you up right after the outbreak?”  
“After the prison. A few weeks after.”  
“The prison?”  
“That’s my home.” Carl’s voice got stronger. “We stayed there for… I don’t know. Two years? And before that we spent a while on a farm. My dad and my mom and me, and my sister, my sister was born in the prison.” He suddenly looked ashamed. “I mean, not just us. There were other people, too, but they… when those guys found me,it was just me and my dad.”  
“The rest die?”  
“Probably.”  
When Negan said, “Im sorry to hear that.” He was shocked to find that he genuinely meant it.

\---

Carl slept on top of the blanket, said he didn't like the pressure of it. He had his arms crossed in front of him, his knees pulled into his chest, taking up as little space on the bed as possible. 

Negan could tell that he barely slept. He wanted to reassure the boy in some way, was tempted to shake him awake when he finally drifted off and let out muted cries with every exhale. It was best not to, he decided, best not to make him too self conscious. For a few years short of a decade now (fuck, had it really been that long?) the only thing he wanted to be was scary, intimidating. Carl was the first person he’d met since the outbreak that he didn’t want to frighten.


	4. I Am A Flightless Bird [And There'll Be No More After Me]

When the claimers found them, Rick hadn’t spoken in three days. Before that, all he could do was repeat his daughter’s name in a trance, mumble about the empty car seat. 

_“Judith, Judith…”_

Carl wished he’d shut up, but once he did the boy would have given anything to hear his father’s voice. The man barely sipped the water that Carl brought him, refused the food. He didn’t turn his head to face the intruders when they kicked in the door. They hit him twice before he even acknowledged them, and when he did all he managed was a nod. The fat guy, Paul, hit him a third time and that’s when Carl stepped out of the kitchen, gun drawn. They laughed at him.

_“How cute.”_  
“Pretty little thing.”  
“Don’t hurt yourself with that.” 

He’d been so tough back then, eyes shielded by the brim of his hat and shining with the confidence that he’d already been through the worst, that he was hardened enough to handle whatever came next in this world.  
He fired, he knew he pulled the trigger, but no bullet came out. That’s when Joe stepped forward, grabbed his wrist.  
 _“Claimed.”_

He tried to pull away, called out to his dad but Paul was already patting him down for weapons. Rick was cooperating until the older man started dragging Carl upstairs to the bedrooms. Then he was struggling, begging.  
 _“He’s just a kid! Please, I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll go with you, but he’s just a kid!”_  
And at the time Carl was sure that the man was dragging him upstairs to kill him. He wished they had, that they’d beaten him to death in the living room and left him to turn like his father. 

Instead, Joe dragged him into what looked like it had once been a little girl’s room. He took the hat off Carl’s head and hung it on a bookshelf shaped like a castle. The walls were plastered with oversized stickers of Disney princesses. There was a stopped clock shaped like a cat, the same color as the one he used to have back home. He tried to focus on those things while Joe tugged his clothes off. It must have been his calmness, his cooperation that prompted the man to ask,  
 _“Do you even know what I’m going to do to you?”  
“Do you know what fucking is?”_

He avoided the man’s gaze, followed the pattern of the stitching on his hat with his eyes. Even while he was lifted into the intruder’s lap, he was wondering why the man couldn’t kill him with his clothes on. 

It hurt so bad that he couldn’t take in enough air to scream. He envisioned a white-hot iron pipe moving through him, impaling him, threatening to bust out the front.   
_“Relax, relax."_  
Every time Joe said it, he forced inside again and Carl was sure he would drag a length of intestine with him whenever he pulled back out. The only comfort was that this wasn’t survivable, it couldn’t be, anything this painful was bound to kill him. It didn’t. 

When Joe brought Carl back down, he’d left the hat and undershirt upstairs, hooded jacket open, jeans unbuttoned and covered in blood. Carl was glad that Rick was dead, dying, unmoving on the floor with his face beaten flat and unrecognizable. His father's eyes were closed and somehow that was better than him being still alive. Even if he’d never been given the words, he knew from the jeers that greeted them that what had been done to him was deeper than just violence.


	5. Something Here [Will Eventually Have To Explode]

When Negan finished rinsing the soap off himself, he reached down and ran a handful of opaque shampoo through Carl’s hair.  
“Greasy little bastard.” He mumbled, working the pink goop into a foam.  
The room was covered in bleached tiles, an open shower setup like he was used to in the prison. The water was hot, though, and the stench of peppermint was overwhelming. Carl had expected that the water would be soothing, but it stung all the skinless, open parts of him. He hissed, leaned out of the stream only to be pulled back in.  
“We’re gonna go slow,” Negan reminded him as he was coaxed from the floor to his knees.   
Carl didn’t hesitate.   
Within seconds, the older male was arching his back against the tile wall. He tried to keep composed, but it was almost funny how quickly he was coming undone. Carl had skills, precision that could only come from trying to bring the despised task to as immediate an end as possible. Negan guessed it might have been that skill that saved his life for so long despite his obvious damage.  
Then again, it was the damage that made him something to behold. He existed as a pile of parts, functioned in sections. Like a ghost, everything but the warmth of his mouth had vanished. 

\--

Afterward, Negan couldn't help but feel guilty.   
Carl sat at the foot of the bed, still wrapped in a towel and reading a comic book that he’d ordered Simon to bring from one of the common rooms. All it took was some small kindness and he knew that the boy would tolerate, even forgive any abuse he could bring himself to inflict. It was too easy, short of what he could even call manipulative.   
It was cheap.   
He knew he shouldn’t have felt so safe asleep next to the youth, almost wished the younger male would make an attempt on his life in the night so he would feel justified in what he wanted to do. It was one thing to put him on his knees, to violate him, but no matter how the urge plagued him, Negan couldn't bring himself to cross the line of causing Carl pain.   
Eventually, he knew he would have to. Nothing but his own decency kept him from the act, and he doubted a fleeting thing like decency would hold out much longer. 

\--

In the night, Negan would listen to Carl crying out in his sleep. He would convince himself that the boy’s nightmares didn’t appear to be getting worse, that he didn’t shake his head in fits more frequently or push up in a panic against every stray corner of blanket that migrated to cover him. 

On a run to collect from the Hilltop, he caught himself in a state of exhaustion and realized that he couldn’t remember when the last night he actually slept was. He was a savior: a savior: a savior, the word looped around his brain like a noose. A savior. He was Carl’s savior, he rationalized, not just another interchangeable predator in the boy’s long history as prey.

\--

Days later, when he finally broke down and ordered Carl to take the shirt off, lay face down on the bed, he was surprised by the younger man’s unhesitating obedience.   
“I’m not trying to brag or anything,” Negan was coating himself in Vaseline. “I don’t want to hurt you, I’ll make it as easy as I can, but you’re small. I’m not. You get what I’m saying?”  
“I know.” Carl’s voice was dull with resignation, shoulder blades pointed tense and dagger-sharp as he braced himself under the man’s shadow. 

When he finished, Negan looked down to see his coarse pubic hair matted with blood. He pulled out and Carl slumped over on his side, held his stomach. He was crying, drooled bile, flinched but didn’t pull away when Negan gathered the wilted victim in his arms. The sheets were ruined but it didn’t matter.  
Negan was rocking him, soothing the boy’s hair.  
“That’s it, that’s my tough guy.” He cooed. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”


	6. I Leave A Trail Of Burned Things In My Wake

For a while, Carl had considered Mark a friend. Mark was the son of a man named Rob, a year or two older than Carl but slow in a way that was almost imperceptible unless you really watched him. The older boy, like his father, was blonde and strikingly tall. He hunted lizards, had a reptile smile and a mouth full of overlapping teeth.

He’d been hunting lizards when he came across Carl. At that house, the green one with the flat roof, they kept him in a shed just off the property. It was a warm day, sticky-hot and so humid that Carl’s hair was plastered flat over his face. The lizard scurried under the door, catching his attention, and seconds later it swung open. 

Once they caught it, Carl, half-insane with hunger, bit the creature’s head off. That was how the friendship started, Mark catching tiny animals and bringing them to Carl, who would tear through fur and swallow bone to the older boy’s amusement. 

\--

The boys kept each other a secret until winter, once there was no option but to bring Carl into the house. The claimers tried to keep Mark out of the room where Carl was held. He would watch them morph from the familiar monsters to humans, fathers, shepherding the older boy away with some distraction or bribe.  
_“Don’t worry about that, buddy.”_  
_“I bet you’re hungry, yeah?”_  
They would ask Mark to bring them a lizard, sidestep his insistence to see inside the locked room. 

When they caught him at Carl’s window, showing off a toy train that he had whittled from a log, they took the blanket off Carl’s bed and hung it so that not even light could get in. He wasn’t sure if there was ever an official talk or if it was just somehow understood, but after that day Mark was fascinated with him.

\--

There were other boys, but none lasted more than a season. Camps didn’t know to kill the boys when the Claimers took over. They always shot the girls, the women. Mark told him this through the crack under Carl’s door, voice bitter with disappointment. Three years in (or had it been four since this all started?) females didn’t let themselves get captured alive. 

Mark said that there had been women at first, mothers even, but they all got pregnant by the end of the first year. Most of them lost it in the first few months, trekking around in the scorching heat with barely any food or water. The two that had babies didn’t live to hold them. Mark’s mom was one of those two.  
_“Im glad she’s dead.”_ He’d said, _“Dad’s not Dad anymore.”_

\--

If Mark had anything to do with the other boys, he never brought it up. Sometimes, in the morning, Mark would come outside to the side of the house. He would look anxious, embarrassed, eyes unfocused like he hadn’t slept.  
Carl always knew, from the awkward silence, that there was a body inside and he was the only one again.  
_“I’m glad you’re not dead.”_ Mark said, once.

\--

The first time he saw Mark in the bedroom with the rest of them, Carl felt betrayed. He tried not to meet the other’s eyes, aware for the first time in a long time that none of this was okay. Suddenly too present, he tried to will himself to become vapor.

After that, Mark would come around the side of the house at night. It was different with just the two of them. He’d never been kissed before.  
_“Shh, Joe’ll kill me.”_  
Carl was never more aware of how alone he was than on those nights. Sometimes, after Mark went back inside, he would trace the print of the blonde’s bare foot in the dirt and dream of a reality where Mark was the only one who touched him.

\--

If he had to pinpoint where it went bad, Carl would have to say it was right after he lost his eye. Mark got cold all of the sudden. First Carl was sure that the older male was detaching, trying not to get hurt when Joe finally killed his unruly prisoner, but after he lost the eye Carl was worried that he’d been beaten ugly.

 _“You could have told me. I would have helped you.”_  
Other than that, snapped so quick and harsh that Carl wasn’t sure he’d actually heard it, Mark didn’t seem to want anything to do with him. It wasn’t long after that he was just like the rest of them.

\--

The last time he made a run for it, Mark was the one who brought him back.  
_“Like catching a lizard.”_ He bragged.  
Carl slashed him across the face with an angled stone, a wound that later festered so severely that it required the amputation of an entire nostril. In return, back at the house, Mark hacked an uppercase ‘A’ shape into each ankle and Carl understood that whatever had once been good between them was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to write something a little bit lighter than the last few chapters but Im not sure it really turned out how I intended lol.


	7. Name One Thing About Us Two Anyone Could Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO MUCH for all the amazing feedback <3 It really motivates me to get the chapters out faster :D

Compliant, that’s the word that Negan found himself using to describe Carl in his head. He responded best to routines, so that’s what they fell into. The boy gratefully accepted the small trinkets that Negan pulled aside for him; sometimes candy, or a plastic-wrapped magazine from the front of an empty grocery store. Weird shit like that was everywhere these days, piles of it barely touched. Food, guns, ammo, those things went fast. Shopping malls still stood full of complete nonsense, millions of dollars of jewelry and designer clothing, most of it no worse than a little faded in color.   
“What do you like?” He’d asked Carl one night as he dabbed blood away from the younger man’s thighs with a wet cloth.   
Carl didn’t hesitate, “Legos.”  
Negan burst out laughing. “You really are too fuckin’ cute.”  
“Not like I’ve had a lot of time for new hobbies.” He was blushing. “Just it’s the last thing I really remember liking. I had a bunch at home.”  
“I just,” Negan chuckled again. “It wasn’t what I expected. Fuckin’ Legos!”

When his men returned, Simon carried in a black plastic trash bag full of brightly-colored boxes.   
“Sick of this shit.” He sniped at Negan. “Little bitch wants anything else, he can get his ass out of bed and get it for himself.”  
“That your way of telling me you want my dick?” Even though Negan was the shorter of the two, something in him towered over Simon. “You jealous? Looking to swap with him?”  
“No, sir.”  
“So then what privileges I afford my wives doesn't sound like any of your goddamn motherfucking business, does it?”  
Carl was ruffling through the bag which was loaded up with the expensive kind of kits, the kind he only got one of each Christmas. The boxes were barely dented, still wrapped in anti theft plastic and dangling disconnect door alarm sensors. He could feel Simons eyes on him as he busted open the first plastic box, two needle-cold beams of hate drilling through his back.

\--

In the corner of Negan’s bedroom, Carl was constructing a universe. It was a safe place, colorful and stagnant. It was what he spent all his free time doing, arranging a multicolored metropolis and rearranging it into something even more spectacular with every addition that Negan’s scowling general would present him. 

In his world, the Eiffel tower was the only thing that separates London and Buckingham Palace from New York City’s skyline. Beside that was a carousel, A bridge with watchtowers that lifted to let his ship pass under, a Star Wars Death Star. Fifty little people, plastic safe people; cavemen, princesses, batman, even two identical race car drivers. A tiny slice of what it had been before, so briefly that he wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined that world entirely. He was glad that there were no Lego sets for after the world ended

\--

Carl would blush when Negan would survey his work. He couldn’t tell if the man was trying to be patronizing or if he was genuinely impressed at the meticulously built replicas of a world Carl had barely lived in.  
“That’s pretty fuckin’ cool!” His face cracked into a wide smile, “Legos, huh?” Almost mesmerized by how the Ferris wheel turned, how the figures on the carousel raised and lowered. “Legos. Shit. You know what kinda shit I liked when I was your age?”  
Carl shook his head.  
“Beer. Beer and pussy.”

\--

Carl’s first beer didn’t go down particularly smooth. They were from the Hilltop’s brewery, which had been up and running for over a year and a half now. That had been the best invention, the thing that made Negan feel the most at home. The fat guy from Alexandria who built their mill had put it together after all sorts of groaning and protests from all the worst kinds of people. Bullshit, Negan thought, clutching their pearls over beer when the world’s long over anyway. 

It only took two and the kid was dizzy, giggling at the ceiling beams. He melted into Negan instead of resisting when the man pulled their bodies together. Smooth cheeks brushed against the woolly hair on his chest and Negan could feel the boy listening for his heartbeat.  
In a flighty, far-away voice, the drunken youth asked to be kissed.  
Negan obliged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I decided to write an ACTUALLY light chapter for once haha hope I didn't disappoint anybody with the fluff in this one. Once gain, thank you so much for reading <3 <3 <3


	8. Like The Nagging Flash Of Insight [You're Always Desperate To Avoid]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh snap, Im actually starting to get to the plot of this thing. As always thank you so much to all my readers for all the support <3

He always pretended it was an ethics thing, but Negan’s distaste for sexual violence had always been more about pride. It was about the implicit rejection in taking by force what had always been readily available to him. Until recently, his ego had refused to process the possibility of a scenario where he wasn’t wanted.

He tried not to think of what he did to Carl as force. It was hard to maintain the illusion; the younger male was all averted eyes, bled even when Negan went slow. If he knew it was coming he’d spend the whole day trembling, get so worked up that he’d make himself sick. Afterward he would look empty, fragile as the shed skin of a snake and Negan would feel like a monster.

As much as Negan knew he hated it, Carl never resisted. Sometimes he told himself that that would be the line. He told himself that if the boy ever used the word ‘No’, ever tried to push him off or crawl out from under him, he would stop. It was bullshit, but luckily Carl never tested the theory. 

\--

He tried to assuage his guilt with bribery. Candies, plastic building blocks, puzzle magazines; Carl always responded gratefully. Keeping him occupied cut down on the time he spent looking wounded and pathetic, made it so that Negan didn’t have to think too hard about what he was trying to make up for.

In another life, Carl might have been a mechanic, an artist, an architect. His constructions were elaborate, a tiny plastic world slowly overtaking Negan’s room. In bed, when he had Carl rolled over on his front, he would catch the younger male staring off into the corner at his creations, trying to pretend he was plastic instead of tearing tissue. 

\--

The coming winter was the main reason that Negan decided that they’d go to Alexandria, where the houses had working radiators and dependable hot water. Simon was the other reason. The second in command was getting hostile, antsy. He got like that every now and again. He needed to pretend he was in charge. Negan didn’t mind letting him take over operations when the weather got shitty, it was a welcome vacation.

On the last run, he’d brought back a Lego set with a razor-sharp piece of plastic between the flaps of the box. That’s when Negan started planning for the move, decided the other man needed some space. He didn’t understand Simon’s unyielding hatred for Carl. If anything, the tall man had gone out of his way to be gracious to Negan’s previous wives. Now he was acting the part of the bratty, jealous step-child.

\--

Carl disassembled his plastic universe in preparation for their trip. Negan warned him that he could only take a pillowcase full, but he insisted on taking everything apart anyway, as if he feared his tiny world would continue in his absence.   
“Place is fucking classy,” He told Carl about their new home. “Sons of bitches bake fresh bread every day. Shit’s stale as a brick by the time they ship it out here, but in Alexandria you can get a loaf right out of the oven!”

Alexandria had been Negan’s winter home for about three years, after solving what he referred to as ‘some confusion’ with the original settlers. It was the lap of luxury compared to the old hospital that he and his men had repurposed as their main outpost almost a decade ago.  
“Electricity and everything!” He gushed as he packed. “Like it use to be.” And then he paused because something about those words felt cruel. _‘Like it used to be’._ He knew it was an impossible promise.


	9. My Brakes Are Going to Give [And I Wont Know Till Its Too Late]

The house had three floors, with the master bedroom taking up most of the top level. A woman named Olivia lived on the first floor year round, and worked as a sort of maid in the winters. She was heavyset, had a bright smile and black hair pulled back into a bun. She’d set out bread and jam on the table for their arrival, regarded Carl with a mix of curiosity and knowing distaste. 

When Negan got too familiar with her, pinched at her backside during introductions, she slapped him with an open palm hard enough to make his nose bleed. He quipped something about her weight in response, and if she hadn’t struck him so hard, Carl might have mistaken their banter for flirting. 

When she tried to show Carl a room on the first floor, Negan asked in a playful tone if she intended to keep him company in the bedroom. That must have confirmed her suspicions. She looked at Carl with a horrified pity that, he was surprised to find, enraged him. She obviously had no idea what the world was like, pampered and safe behind massive walls. She had no idea how much worse it got. She had no right, he wanted to scream, to pity him.

\--

Carl needed to be carried up the stairs. He could tell that Olivia was stalling, sending Negan up with table lamps and clean blankets to occupy his arms as he ascended to their quarters. When he was out of sight she crouched to get in Carl’s personal space and asked, in a voice like she was talking to a toddler, “Is he hurting you?”

He laughed in her face.

\--

With Olivia in the house, Negan was developing a sort of performance anxiety. He would freeze when the bedsprings creaked too loud, clamp a hand over Carl’s mouth. At the compound, when it was just his male subordinates around to judge him, he hadn’t given a second thought to being seen with the boy. Olivia made it different. She displayed such open disgust toward the situation that the Savior couldn’t help but be self-conscious.  
_“Stop with the fucking attitude!”_ He wanted to demand. _“Stop treating me like I’m doing something wrong!”_  
Instead, he bore her sharp glances from across the kitchen, tolerated how she treated Carl like a beaten dog. It wasn’t worth escalating the conflict; she was a good cook, and kept up with the dusting. 

It was for the same reason that he left the house less frequently than he had on previous visits. He sent Olivia to the bakery for bread in the morning instead of going himself. She was too embarrassed to gossip about the subject, he guessed, because he noticed no change in the residents of the town. Still, there was paranoia whenever he went into the open. Even if they didn’t know his exact crime, he knew he carried an air of guilt.

\--

It was early evening when they were walked in on. That girl who took over Hilltop, the one who was with that Asian kid he had to beat to death, opened the bedroom door. He knew she wouldn’t be quiet about it, still holding a grudge over whats-his-name like nobody else on earth ever died. She shouted an apology, slammed it shut, but Negan knew she saw all she needed to; Carl straddling his lap, skinny legs wrapped around the man’s muscled torso, both their clothing in a pile at the foot of the bed.  
He threw a pillow at the back of the door.  
“Fucking knock!”  
Downstairs he could hear two female voices, short-hair trying to calm a hysterical Olivia.  
He mumbled, “Tattletale bitches.”  
This was going to turn into a whole thing.

\--

Carl could hear the argument downstairs, Negan’s voice and an unfamiliar woman.  
“Ask him!” Negan was shouting. “Ask him if I make him do anything!”  
The other voice was quiet and accusing. He could make out the word _“Blood,”_ but that was all.  
Olivia’s voice cut them both off, “I wash your sheets! Covered, covered in blood!”

A few minutes later, footsteps pounded up the staircase, one set and then two fast behind it. Carl pulled the sheet up around his shoulders. He watched the doorknob turn.  
He processed the door opening after a new voice asked him if he was being kept against his will, but he knew they happened in the other order. A lady cop stood before him in full uniform.  
“Im fine.” he shook his head. It was humiliating, one thing to survive it all but a different beast entirely to hear himself consent.  
“He’s fine!” Negan was trying to usher the two Alexandrians back downstairs when the girl with the short hair shoved past him.  
“How old is he?” She demanded in a thick southern drawl. “How old are you?”  
“You gonna card him?” Negan stood in the doorway, looking exhausted. The cop glared at him, but then her face changed. Her dark skin tightened over her frowning features, pulling her braids flatter against her head.  
She hadn’t been told his name, but she brushed the hair away from his face and said “Oh my God. Carl.”  
Negan realized, exasperated, that this was about to turn into an even bigger thing.


	10. As My Last Chance To Feel Human Begins To Vaporize

“No!” Negan’s voice was amused, incredulous. “Bullshit! No way!”  
“I don’t see what’s so funny.” The cop was unwrapping Carl’s bandage. When she got it off, he noticed her making an effort to contain her disgust.  
“Are you kidding me? This is hi-fucking-larious!” He was pacing by the front door. “What’s taking that son of a bitch so long, you’d think he’d be excited!”  
The cop dabbed rubbing alcohol at Carl’s missing eye. She’d taken off the jacket of her uniform and draped it over the boy’s jagged shoulders to cover him.   
“Jessie’s in the tower, Maggie needs to switch with her if she’s gonna watch the kids.”  
“Bring them!” Negan beamed. “It’ll be a big family reunion!”

\--

Rick was on his back, pinned to the livingroom floor under Negan’s weight.  
“Hey!” the larger man had a handful of Rick’s shirt in a white-knuckle fist. “Hey! Calm the fuck down!”  
Rick was incoherent, face red and covered in sweat.  
“- Kill you! You pervert piece of shit, I’ll-”  
“C’mon now!” Still holding his shirt, Negan pulled Rick to his feet. “That’s no way to thank the man who saved your boy’s life!”  
Rick was unsteady, weaving where he stood like a drunk.  
“His… his face. His… what did you…?”  
“Now Rick, that hurts my feelings.”   
Carl could see Negan’s fist twist in the fabric, pulling his father closer. In a few years, the man had become unrecognizable. His face was speckled with grey stubble, hair somewhat overgrown. He’d lost weight that he couldn’t afford to lose, his posture meek and wilted.   
“His eye…”   
Rick hadn’t acknowledged Carl yet, kept referring to him in the third person.  
“You shoulda seen what he looked like when I bought him. Hell, if anything I fixed him up. Put ten pounds on him, changed the bandages.” He lifted Rick onto the tips of his toes. “You’re welcome.”

\--

Olivia finally badgered Negan into giving the two a minute alone.   
When Rick threw his arms around Carl, the boy tensed at the contact. He pulled the oversized jacket closed, refused to look his father in the eyes. The man kept repeating his name in disbelief, took one side of his face in his hand.  
“Please don’t touch me.”  
“I… sorry, I’m sorry.” He moved away as if Carl had burned him. “You’re alive. You’re alive!”  
He wished he wasn’t.   
“Your sister. She’s…” Rick stammared. “And brothers! You have brothers now!”  
“Okay, Dad.”  
“I’ll… we’ll work something out, move you in with us. We’ll get you out of here. We’ll get you away from him. Things are going to be different, he won’t… nobody’s going to...”  
“Dad…”  
“I’m sorry. Carl, I-”  
“Dad.”

\--

Negan was in the kitchen. He stood between Rick and the door, smirking.  
“Real chatterbox, that boy of yours.”  
Whenever Rick tried to sidestep past him, Negan moved back in his way.  
“Maybe it’s my fault.” He leaned on the frame of the back exit. “Might have fucked the brains right out of his head.”  
Then Olivia was stepping between them, pushing Rick outside with dishwater-pruned fingers. Negan was cackling, reaching over Olivia’s shoulder to get a final shove in.   
“Good idea, Rick! It’s getting late!” Negan called out after him. “If you get back to your old lady in time, maybe we’ll both get our dicks sucked tonight!”  
Rick turned back, charged in blind rage.  
Negan slammed the door on him, still laughing.

\--

“I fucking hate that guy.” Negan was in his boxers, staring out the window at the street where the wussy priest was trying to calm Rick down. Every now and then, the frequency of his voice would breach the glass of the windows. He was absolutely losing it, alternating between collapsing in tears on the side of the house and storming the porch while the priest held him back by the loop of his belt.   
“Pain in my ass.” he laughed, turned to the bed where Carl was. “That a pun? That’s kind of a pun in this situation, right?”  
Carl didn’t respond, craning his neck to see into the street where a blonde woman had her arms around his father.  
“Hey!” Negan snapped his fingers in Carl’s face, suddenly serious. “Don’t make me have handle him. Nobody’s coming to rescue you.”


	11. And We Let The Silence That's Our Trademark Make Its Presence Felt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW! Thank you all so much to all of you who commented for the wonderful feedback! A special thanks to Staghag and Bloody_Princess, you guys are so fabulous and so motivating!

The change happened overnight. There was no effort to obscure it anymore; if anything, Negan had started to show Carl off. He was rougher with the younger male, made it a point to leave fingerprints on his hip bones and shoulders. He opened the windows so that the pained bleating carried into the street. Carl adjusted. It was a part he knew how to play well. Familiar, rehearsed, the role of the victim felt strangely safe. 

In the end, this is how it always was. No matter how it started they would reach a tipping point, they would change, pain became the goal instead of a side effect. Bodies that had once meant warmth became weapons. He made them change, he reasoned, they were good and something about him made them evil. 

It was always the worst after Maggie came by. She knocked on the door every few days to change his bandage, always had her gun pointed at the Savior leader when he let her inside. Sometimes Tara, the nurse, came with ointment for the parts of Carl’s body that force and friction had rubbed skinless. Other times, it was the police officer. She asked the same questions every visit.  
“Are you here of your own free will?”  
“Is he forcing you to participate in any activities that you find objectionable?”  
“Do you feel that you’re being abused or mistreated?”   
Scripted on a slip of paper.   
Sometimes, Negan would step out of the room and whatever women were in the house would surround him, urge him.  
“We can’t take action without a report.”  
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”  
They each, on separate occasions, pulled him aside to relate stories of frat parties and uncles and piano teachers.  
Everybody other than the cop, Michone, avoided the word _‘rape’_. 

\--

When Negan realized that the women were keeping Rick from confronting him, they started attending church. The first Sunday that they showed up, Father Gabriel stopped reading, stuttered an unfriendly greeting. He stood at the pulpit, frozen, until Negan reanimated the sermon with a wave of his hand. Carl was over his shoulder, tossed into the pew like luggage. The congregation continued to gape at them, fish-out-of-water mouths and unintelligible whispers.   
“Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Afterward, when it had cleared out to just Rick and them and Gabriel, Negan approached the front pew where the priest was trying to calm the disheveled sheriff. Rick looked like he hadn’t slept in months.   
“Fuckin’ rude!” He approached the two shorter men. “Pardon the language but Jesus H Christ, you are ice fuckin’ cold, Rick.”  
“Is there something I can help you with?” The priest answered for him.  
“Just fucked up.” He motioned to the back where he’d left Carl. “I mean shit, you ain’t gonna say hi to him? Introduce him to the family? Just gonna blow us off?” He shook his head. “Hurts _my_ feelings for chrissake, can’t imagine how the kid feels.”  
“He and Jessie agreed,” Gabriel was still talking for him. “It’s inappropriate to involve Sam, and especially Judith. She’s six. It’ll just confuse her.”  
Rick’s lips flattened into a thin line, swallowed themselves invisible.  
“That so, Sherif?”  
Gabriel stood between them. “It’s important,” he insisted, “that we retain a sense of normalcy. For the community.”  
“Damn, Rick. You always find new ways to disappoint me.”

\--

Carl’s hair was still wet from the shower. His fingernails left crescent moons in the soft wood of the window frame. He’d been looking into houses, trying to figure out which one his family was inside of. He’d resisted when the man tried to pull him to the bed. Then Negan was mere units of pressure from uprooting his scalp, driving his forehead into the corner where the wall and window met. Pushed too far forward to support his weight, held up only by the body that pinned him- it made sense like this, wasn’t confusing like when the man tried paradoxically not to hurt him.   
He crumpled to the floor, a pile of disembodied doll parts, when the pressure was released. His being appeared to pulse almost supernaturally with every sob that tore through him.  
Negan reasoned that he was more startled than hurt.  
“C’mon.” He put himself back inside of his boxers and lifted the smaller male under his arms, impatient. “You’re fine. No blood. You’re fine. You gonna give me trouble next time?”  
When Carl sunk back to the floor, Negan’s grip softened. He was, all at once, overcome with airlessness, the sensation that the room was filling up with the small ghosts of some horrible disaster.   
“Hey” He crouched to place a hand on Carl’s shoulder. “I shouldn’t have done that. That wasn’t about you.”

\--

Carl stayed by the window all night. Seated, his eyes barely came above the windowsill. A red line formed on one cheek, ripening to a bruise from the decorative molding, as he watched every door for signs of his father. He never saw Rick, but recognized the blonde woman when she came out for a cigarette at sunrise.   
Two houses between them, that was it.   
He thought about yelling something to her, at her, but his voice stuck to the backs of his teeth and his lips refused to form vowels. 

In the morning, Negan woke up to find him dead-eyed, listless. His bandage was transparent, soaked with a night’s worth of tears, the backs of his hands crusted in dried snot.  
He must have sensed the other awaken, because he mumbled into the sickly green paint.  
“He replaced me.”


	12. And Even If I Never Get There At All [Would You Leave The Seat Empty]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you SO MUCH to all my active readers, you guys are what keeps me going <3 <3 <3

Once Carl identified the house, he watched it all day. He watched their pretend family living a pretend life. He hated them. He spent hours hating them while they lived their fantasy, unaware that he even existed.   
“I get it.” He said when Gabriel visited the house after service one day to ask him to stop attending. And he did, he understood; his existence was a reminder of everything they were trying to move on from.   
“That absolutely doesn’t mean…” The priest had been expecting more of an argument. He took Carl by the hand and assured the uninterested boy that he would be welcome to visit privately, that Gabriel would even come to him if he was interested in religious instruction, even just somebody to pray with.   
“Thank you.”  
“Carl-” Gabriel squeezed his hand when he turned to leave. “This is an amazing gift that you are giving to the community. It doesn’t go unrecognized.”

\--

The little girl, Judith, was always by Negan’s side when he was out of the house. The children of Alexandria had no fear of him. They regarded him almost as a modern Santa Claus, swarmed him in the open streets. He won them over in the same way he had Carl; toys and trinkets and larger than life charisma. Only one avoided him, a scrawny toddler with thick-lidded blue eyes who never left Maggie’s side.  
Negan got annoyed when Carl asked him about it.  
“Mom’s a total cunt, got the poor kid thinking I’m the motherfucking boogyman.”  
“Why?” It didn’t make sense to Carl, the older man was a natural with children.  
“Same reason your old man has such a dick up his nose about me. Some uptight fucks just cant get over being shown they weren’t the strongest. Sore losers.”  
When Carl pressed for the full story, Negan was happy, almost proud to tell it.

“I, me and my guys, we had this whole area locked down nice. Had a symbiotic network of goods and services being exchanged that your pops decided to call a ‘protection racket’ and then in the next breath decides he’s gonna take it over and be the big swinging dick in town. Gets a bunch of fucking people killed. Kills the lady who pretty much built Alexandria, kills her son, kills the town doctor to fuck his wife, real scumbag if you ask me. Kills my guys when I send them over to talk, to fucking talk, and big dick Rick has his guys on the tower blow their heads off. Completely fucking unreasonable. So I decide fuck it, I’ll go down there and handle it myself. 

“So I’m about halfway there, planning on talking to him by morning, and me and my guys are literally doing nothing,minding our own buisness, pulled over for a piss. This fucking asshole, I swear to god, bullet whizzed right past my ear. Fucking coward, right? You don’t shoot a man with his fly down, that’s bullshit. No fucking decency. Turns out he’s pulling this shit with a truckload of kids headed to hilltop for safekeeping. Which, just- Irresponsible! You don’t start a gunfight around a bunch of kids. Fucked up, that’s what that is. So we pull them over, circle everybody up on their knees and it’s all chicks and little kids, they’re all crying their eyes out, real fucked up spot to put me in. 

“There’s a pregnant girl holding a goddamn baby, so I’m not hitting her. Not gonna bash up the little girl that was with her. Rick’s boys were… shit, Ron’s the oldest and he couldn’t have been older than like thirteen, fourteen, and Sam was just a little guy. So it’s Rick and his girl and the pregnant girl and a bunch of kids, only other person there is this asian kid. He was like your age, maybe a little older. Now, personally, I was trying to avoid being fucked up. I believe in consequences, in order. Tried to be as reasonable as I could, but at some point there’s gotta be consequences. 

“I’m usually good about it, get it over with in one shot. The kid as a fucking mess and at the last second he flinched away, turned his head, I think he was trying to say something to the girl. Found out later it was his baby in her, felt all kinds of fucked up about that. I mean, if I’m being really honest, shit, I kind of resent Rick for making me have to do that. Not something Im proud of. But anyway, he turned and I got him on a weird angle and his eye popped out and I was kind of a dick about it. Took four swings to put him down for good. Not my fault; kid had a thick fucking skull, hard as a goddam walnut. But anyway, wasn’t exactly a charming first impression.”

\--  
Negan was furious when he heard about Gabriel’s visit.  
“He said you could still come.” Carl assured him.  
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about church, guy can’t talk for shit anyway.”  
“What’s the big deal then?” The younger male asked in a sleepy voice, pulling the blanket up around himself.  
“Shit, kid.” Negan rolled over next to him, and that’s how the conversation ended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little more of an exposition/transitional chapter setting up for the next plot point so I hope it wasnt too boring.


	13. Keep It On Your Mind

Rick didn’t leave the house much, anymore. At first he was honest with himself; he was avoiding Negan. Soon, though, he has other excuses. He doesn’t change his clothes for days at a time, stops showering. He tells himself he’ll face the world when he can muster the strength to make himself presentable. When he stops eating he tells himself that it’s because his beard is overgrown, he doesn’t want to get food in it, but he makes no efforts to shave. He spends entire days in the basement, where the artificial heat doesn’t reach. The cold is the only thing keeping him from puking. 

Three days after Ron announces to the house that his wife, Enid, is pregnant, he offers her wine at the dinner table.  
“I’m pregnant.” She reminds him gently.  
“Oh?” He remarks, genuinely surprised. “Congratulations.”   
He forgets almost immediately, and spends the rest of the night fighting a choking sensation.  
The air takes on the consistency of grease in his lungs.

Jessie’s patience wavers. She smokes more, is short with the kids. The house is tidier, sharper, and he realizes that she is trying to clean away the impossible tension that has caked the property with soot since Carl’s discovery.   
\--

Judith’s safe return had felt like a miracle. He was still in the hospital at Alexandria when he heard a familiar voice hollering his last name.  
“Grimes? Grimes!”  
“That’s what his ID said.”  
When he saw Carol, who was supposed to be dead, standing over him with the daughter he was still mourning, he assumed he was dead as well. He was fine with it. He took the baby in his bandaged arms and wondered why heaven looked like the repurposed kitchen of some midwestern McMansion. 

The memory of the night he lost Carl was hazy. It never returned all the way, but he remembered a broken sofa holding him upright as fists rained down on them. He remembered looters, Carl screaming from somewhere in the house. The rest was a void. When he woke up in the makeshift hospital of Alexandria, they told him he’d been there over a week. He let a fog settle over that night, but for years he would check the face of every Walker, praying for the closure that putting Carl down himself would bring.

He’d been alive the whole time. He’d been alive a few miles away and they were hurting him and Rick did nothing to stop it. It was easier to hate himself in the past tense. Otherwise, he would have to remember that Carl was still alive, still being hurt. Now the choice to do nothing was conscious, unforgivable.  
\--

On the night that Negan killed Glenn, he dragged Rick by the collar of his shirt. His powerlessness in the hands of the larger man made him feel hollow-boned, and alone in the trailer he anticipated the worst. 

The threat was there, unspoken but overwhelming. Negan backed him against the counter. He stood so close that their knees touched. Nose to nose, he spoke threats against Rick’s mouth.  
“How much worse are you gonna let this get? What do I have to do to get it through to you?”  
Negan’s weight was on his, crushing, forcing the edge of the counter to leave a purple mark along his back.  
He’d laughed, then.   
“You’re lucky that I’m a man with boundaries”

The end of the conflict had been Daryl’s body. He’d already been put down when Negan brought the corpse back to the gates of Alexandria. Both eyes were open and crossed to stare at a puncture wound between them.  
“Simon got a little ahead of himself.” The savior leader offered the explanation with his usual flashy, sarcastic grin. “Now I’m a man with boundaries, decency, but that Simon-” He whistled to punctuate the unfinished statement.   
What Tara found when she examined the body was, out of respect, never discussed with anybody other than Rick.   
He announced their surrender that afternoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to do a Rick chapter, since I have sort of been pushing him to the sidelines


	14. Prayers To Summon The Destroying Angel

Carol kicked in the bedroom door, gun in hand.  She aimed into the chillingly domestic scene; Carl laid, only just stirring, on Negan’s bare chest.  One large, hairy arm snaked out from under the covers to pull the boy close.  The motion was protective, Negan’s body curling to shield Carl from the gaze of the gun.

“Let him up!” Carol demanded.  “This is- I SAID LET HIM UP -this is over!”

“What the fuck is this? Fuck you!”

She pumped the shotgun.

“Fuck this!  Fuck you, lady!”

“Last warning.”

“Fine!  Fine!  Shit on a fucking cracker!” He pushed Carl to the floor.  “Fucking bullshit!  My own fucking house!”

Carl moved on his wrists, dragging himself pathetically toward the armed invader.  

 

Behind the woman with the gun, Maggie had arrived to carry him down the stairs.  Negan figured Olivia must have let them in.  The oldest of the crew still had him pinned under the barrel of a shotgun when he heard a car start.

 

\--

 

“Un-fucking-acceptable, Rick!” He’d slapped the hat right off his head.  

“This… this was not coordinated, this was-” His rambling was cut off by another strike.  This one took him off his feet.  

“Please, please.  Nothing, I had nothing to do with it.” He was out of breath, made no effort to get back to his feet.

“Nothing to do with it?”  He repeated incredulously.  “Nothing. Not winding everybody up?  Got half the goddamn population looking at me like I some fucking-” He growled.

“I don’t know if you’ve caught on yet,  _ sheriff _ , but you should be looking at me like I’m Mother-shit-cunt-Theresa.  I’m practically the fucking Easter Bunny.”

Rick narrowed his eyes.

“Oh, no?  No?  You don’t think so?” Negan grinned. “Ask your boy what it’s like out there.  Ask him, shit, ask him how many six year old little girls are left out there.  Ask what happens, if they spend all day playing with sidewalk chalk and learning ABCs.  I’m a motherfucking miracle worker.  I keep you in your little bubble, let you pretend the world never even ended.  I raise your boy from the fucking dead.   And you, you ungrateful fuck… you think I’m a  _ bad guy _ ?”

He cackled, manic.  

“I guess you’ve gotta learn how bad people,  _ real bad people _ , handle shit.”

 

\--

 

Jessie was screaming even louder than her son.  Ron was on his back with the wind knocked out of him, his pregnant wife over tending to the minimal injury that he obtained when he tried to shove the towering man away from his brother.

 

Rick’s face was wracked with impotent shame. He held the boy’s mother around her middle.

“He’s twelve.” Rick begged.  “I’ll go.  I’ll go, or Ron will.”

“Gave me no choice, Rick.”

“Please. Please, this is… you know this is wrong.  You know this is… he’s twelve, it’s…”

“Gotta prove my point, Rick.”

Negan found it almost impossible to look in Sam’s direction.   

“Two days, Rick.  They’ll be here in two days.  If Carl doesn’t turn up by then, they take Sam back to the sanctuary and I look the other way, let whatever happens happen.”


	15. The Things That You've Got Coming Will Do Things That You're Afraid To

“You can save this one, Rick.”  They were alone in the living room of the family’s home.  Negan decided to stay after realizing that he didn’t have it in him to take Sam across the street.  If these were the last nights until distinct periods of before and after would be drawn in the boy’s life, he deserved to spend them in familiar surroundings.  “Couldn’t stop what happened to Carl, much as we both know you wish you could’ve.  You can stop this, though.”

 

Rick’s eyes were glazed over. He mumbled some nonsense that died on his lips.

 

“I’m trying real fucking hard to be reasonable, Grimes.  World ain’t big enough to hide him for long.  You can make this easy.”  He pushed himself up off the sofa.  “You radio Mommy-Buzzcut and her twin grandmother, get our boy back from…” A grin devoured his jaw. “Hilltop?”

 

Rick tried to lean away, burying his head in the back of his seat.

 

“Where, then?  With that bullshit dungeons and dragons tiger weirdo?”  Negan’s hands were on the arms of Rick’s chair.  

 

He lifted the chair, tilting it back and threatening to tip Rick head first onto the wood floor.  His hands grasped Negan’s wrists in panic.

 

“Any further that, Rick, and you might be too late anyway.”

 

\--

 

It was Jesse who confirmed that Carl was at Hilltop.  

 

Sam was pale, wouldn’t eat when she tried to feed him.  He kept asking what was going to happen to him, what would happen at the sanctuary.  She couldn’t bring herself to put it into words.

“My baby…” she cradled him and fought tears.

“It’s okay Mom, Negan wouldn’t hurt me.” He sounded so sure of himself. “He wouldn’t let anything bad happen.  He protects us.”

That was all Jesse could take.  If Negan had been in earshot instead of downstairs with Rick, that would have most likely been his limit as well.

 

Jesse stormed down the stairs, but from the top of the flight she was screaming “Hilltop!  Hilltop!”

Rick looked up, pale, legs slumped over the the frame of the tipped chair.  When Negan knocked him down, let him fall, Rick knew better than to right himself in the man’s presence.  He’d just be put back down again, and harder.  

Negan clapped his gloved hands. “Hilltop!” He shouted like a game show announcer, then repeated the location into his radio.

“... almost to you…” Came a disgruntled reply through the static.

He looked down at Rick with a wolfish grin.

“Come on through, then.” He spoke into the radio.

 

Negan bent down and lifted Rick until he was hammocked in the fabric of his shirt.

“Radio your girls, tell the if they get back before my guys, I won’t crush their skulls.  Like, uh, like a game.  Like a race.” As much as he hated to admit that he still had limits, he was still somewhat squeamish about hitting girls.  “If I make them drag their asses out here and then send them up to Hilltop Simon is going to throw a goddamn tantrum and I can’t make any guarantees about what condition the place or those people will be in come spring.”

 

\--

 

Judith had distracted Negan by showing him artwork and penmanship practice sheets when Rick slipped into the kitchen to confront his wife.

“Jesse, how-”

“Don’t even!” She spat the non-sequitur, turning to face him so harshly that she spilled her coffee.  “You were just going to let....” She slammed the mug on the counter.

“Jesse, he’s my son!”

“Sam is your son!  Sam is  _ our _ son!  We swore, Rick!  We swore we would never let anything bad happen to  _ any _ of those three kids. Ron is about to be a father and you…” She shoved him away when he tried to embrace her.  “You just  _ offered _ him, like he mans nothing to you!  And for what? For what?”

“For my son!”

“Right.” She lit a cigarette and laughed shortly.  “Your precious son.  The one you said yourself you wished was dead all along.”

“Jesse,” his voice broke. “Judith’s not… she’s not mine.  There was… I came back from the dead but... it was too late… she looks just like him.” He rambled.  “Carl’s the only blood I’ve got.”

She wasn’t listening, but he choked on his words.  He came back from the dead once, just like Carl.  The whole world went to shit when the dead came back to life.

The only thing worse than dying was not staying dead.


	16. I Waited For You But I Never Told You Where I Was

Carl recognized Sophia immediately.  She’d grown taller than him, her freckle-speckled face having hardened since childhood.  The infant ghosts of stress lines had begun to haunt her complexion.  She swaddled him in blankets in the heart of the unheated house while her mother went with Maggie to seek out a man named Jesus.  

 

Sophia had blossomed in their years apart, somehow so much older than him although their years were the same.  She navigated the world around her with a dominance, a confidence that could have only come from knowing shelter.  He felt a strange pang toward her  _ (Admiration? Jealousy? Attraction?) _ and tried not to be hurt when she regarded him like a child.  While she had become a woman, he remained a boy.

 

It took hours of convincing for Carol to allow Dr Carson into the house, which she guarded with a machine gun from a rocking chair on the front porch.  At first, her resistance was adamant.

“Give instructions to Sophia,” Carol insisted.  “She’s a smart girl.  I sure the last thing that boy wants after all he’s been through is some strange man stripping him down and looking him over.”

Eventually, she gave in.  

When Carl peeled away the layers of blankets to be examined, she wished she’d been more firm.  He cried out as if he were being skinned.

\---

 

By the time Jesus came by with clothing, they’d already gotten the word from Rick to return.

“Absolutely not.” Carol snorted, shoving one of Carl’s legs into the slightly-too-big jeans as if he were a doll.  Sophia was buttoning his shirt, Maggie running a comb through his hair in search of lice.  He was floating somewhere in the middle of it all.

 

He missed Negan.  He missed the routine, the security, the scraps of affection that the man provided.  There was comfort in the predictability of it all, a manageable pattern of performance and reward that his vigilante abductors had disrupted.  It was the closest thing to love he’d known since his mother.  The gentleness, the unwavering tenderness of these women was foreign and terrifying.   

 

Without Negan, his position in this world was nebulous at best.  What else could he provide?  What use was he?  None, the Claimers had made sure of that.  A warm body. Two holes. Nothing else worth saving.  Nothing else worth keeping alive.

\---

 

Carl was used to people talking about him as if he wasn’t in the room.

“He’s serious,” Maggie was arguing. “We have to take him back.”

“So you just want to-” Carol sounded disgusted. “You want to hand him back over to  _ rapist _ ?  That’s what we’re lowering the bar to, now?  That’s something you’re okay with?”

“Are you okay with this entire settlement losing its protection?  With those fucking animals-” Maggie looked apologetically at Carl.  “Think about Sophia, or Hershel.  There’s kids here, young kids.  This was a stupid idea.”

Carol only shook her head, tutting under her breath in disapproval.

“I’ll be okay.” Carl finally spoke up. “He’s good to me.  I- I want to go back.”

When Carol started crying and excused herself from the room, he assumed he’d somehow insulted her. 

Maggie was about to go after her when Jesus, the man who’d brought the clothing over earlier, burst through the front door, red-faced and out of breath.

“Get your guns!  We need everybody on the fence, NOW!”


	17. Wringing Out The Hours Like Blood-Drenched Bedsheets

By the time the Saviors arrived, there was no word from Hilltop other than Carol’s first blunt refusal.  The radio was turned off on her end.  They were all seated in the livingroom.

“At the gate.” Simon’s gruff, unmistakable voice crackled over the handheld.

Sam began sniffling.  There were purple circles of sleeplessness setting in around his eyes.  Negan wasn’t sure he could go through with this; at the time, he was only trying to be shocking.  He stalled his men with inventory orders, staring at the silent radio on the coffee table just as desperately as everybody else in the house.  

“Have Ron take the girls across the street to Olivia.  She’ll set them up in the spare rooms.” He sounded tired, voice raspy with frustrated disappointment.  Jesse, sobbing, kissed her son and then Rick as an oblivious Judith pulled her toward Olivia’s house by the sleeve.  Ron and Enid left without a word.

This was getting out of hand.

“Rick-” He wasn’t sure what he was trying to communicate, but it was dire.  The three avoided looking at each other.  Simon said something over the radio that was lost in static.  Rick was mumbling hopelessly into his handheld.  It was clear in his tone, as he scanned channels and begged dead air for a response, that he’d given up on getting one.

Sam was leaning on Rick’s arm.  Negan was fairly sure he’d dozed off before he asked Rick, “How much does he know?”

“What?”

“About-” he finished the sentence with a pointed glance toward the staircase.

“N-” Rick’s voice cracked, “Nothing.  Nothing, he’s only-”

“Shit.” Negan stood up, suddenly unable to get comfortable on the sofa.  “Might want to clear that up, then.  Don’t want the kid thinking it’s his fault.”  He paced in front of the window and tried to ignore Simon’s impatient voice coming through the speakers.  A rage was bubbling up inside of him.  Rick always had to complicate things, always had to push and push.   _ He probably enjoys it _ , Negan thought.   _ He needs somebody to be the bad guy so he can feel like a martyr.    _

\---

 

Simon had shaved his face, everything about him appearing more sinister without the comic relief of his ironic mustache.  He had to duck through the short doorway.  Negan was almost impressed by how Sam had the instinct to fear the man, staring up at him like a circling bird of prey or some supernatural apparition.  He expected Sam to turn to his father for security, but instead felt the boy’s eyes lock on him.

 

Rick didn’t recognize the two men with Simon.  They were young, couldn't have been much older than Ron.  When Negan announced that they’d be moving on to Hilltop in the morning, their only interest was finding Eugene and getting access to the brewery before their stay was over.  Simon stayed behind, scowling at the prospect of another trip through the snow.  Rick knew Simon was never put on such low-level grunt work, and he could tell that Simon was thinking the same thing, that he had to know Negan had called him out to do something horrible.  After all, the entire point of assigning a right hand had been to keep his own clean.

 

“Any word from your girls?” Negan asked, knowing the answer.

Rick shook his head.  He pulled Sam close to him, the muscles in his arm flexing as if they could hold the future itself back.  He wondered, had Rick tried to fight off the Claimers?  Had he held on to Carl so urgently?  Did Carl, innocent but somehow still aware of the severity of his position, start crying like Sam was now?

 

At Sam’s outburst, Simon’s eyes narrowed with dawning comprehension and Negan found himself wishing against all logic that, for the first time in his life, Simon would be the voice of reason.  Like he would storm out.  Like he would be offended by the proposition, call Negan sick, refuse the task.  Instead, he looked vaguely amused.

 

“Rick.” Negan’s voice sounded tired, defeated.  His bluff had been called.  “Show Simon the upstairs.  I’ll bring Sam across the street, make sure your little demon seeds aren’t giving Olivia a hard time.  We’ll figure out tomorrow who’s going where, yeah?”

 

On his way out the door, Rick thanked him.  The taller man had him by the collar of his shirt, dragging him up the staircase the same way Negan had pulled him into the trailer that first night.  Only now the terror on his face had melted away, replaced with a peaceful relief.   Negan couldn’t place why it made him so nauseous.  

 

\---

 

Negan was asleep on the couch of the Grimes house when Rick’s radio crackled to life.  He tuned it out at first, assumed it was just more racket from upstairs, nothing he wanted to engage with.

Then he really listened.

Panic, a woman’s voice and the rumble of distant gunshots that came across the airwaves and made a sound like harsh breathing into the speaker.  One word repeated in the mess of noise.

“Reinforcements!”


	18. Long Vowels (Spill Like Liquid From Your Mouth)

Negan was banging on the door of the upstairs bedroom.

“Trouble at Hilltop!  We need everybody who can shoot!”

There was a rustling from the other side of the wall.

“Get your fuckin’ pants up, Simon!” He hit the doorframe, impatient.

They emerged, sheepish, like two teenagers from the closet of a boy-girl party.  The buttons on Rick’s shirt were done up wrong, the top two ripped off.  It hung off of him as if it had suddenly grown oversized in the few hours he’d been upstairs.

“Fucking third night on the road, bullshit.”  Simon was mumbling, shoving his foot into a boot. “These people are bullshit.”

Rick was gazing off into the middle distance.  He had one shoe on, the other dangling from his hand by the laces.  

“Hey!”  Negan snapped his fingers in front of his face and got only a slow blink in response.  “Tick-tock, sheriff, this is a time-sensitive situation here!”

Rick came crashing back into himself when Simon brushed a hand by the side of his mouth and joked, “The pretty ones are all airheads.”

\---

 

Hilltop was burning.  The first responders from the Savior’s outpost had mostly wiped out the threat by the time the group from Alexandria arrived. The smoke was visible for miles around and sure to complicate the next month with cleanup.  No heard in sight yet, but they would show up without a doubt.

 

Maggie as the first familiar face to greet them in the chaos.  She spirited Tara away to where they had set up an infirmary, babbling about grenades thrown into the nursery.

“Mostly first and second degree burns. But Sophia pulled them out and her arm- I’m not sure we can save it, you need to get down there!”

 

The two younger Saviors were pulled aside by Aaron to scan the area for more attackers.  Carol showed up to brief the rest of them.

“We killed eight, one wounded.  There’s got to be more of them.  They were hiding in the woods, cannibals I think.”

When Negan asked what made her think they were cannibals, she snapped, “The human meat.” And he wasn’t sure that was the answer he was prepared for.

“And the wounded one?”

“In the barn, Jesus is questioning him. All we know now is they came from the north, and we found preserved meat and some very small bones in a satchel that Eugene thinks are human.”

“How many guns?”

“None.”

“None?” He pried.

“None, they had explosives.  Homemade. No short range weapons either.” 

“And Carl?”

She scoffed at him.

“Lady!”  He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around, only to feel the sting of a slap.  

“Don’t touch me.” Her fingernails left lines on his face.

“Carl.” He demanded again, looking back at Rick.

“It’s fine.” Rick’s voice was ragged and sore-sounding. 

“It’s not.” She insisted.

“Lady, this place is literally on fire.”  Negan gestured around, animated. “You really need more problems right now, or are you gonna return the property that you stole from my goddamn house.  I don’t think I’m the one being unreasonable here.”

\---

 

The reunion was, in a sickening way, almost sweet.  Negan embraced the younger male, regarded him like a pet that had escaped from the yard.  Carl fell, painlessly, back into place.  He clung to the man, relieved by his presence, shaken by the aftermath of the attack.  He didn’t speak until late at night, after Simon found an excuse to take Rick to scan the perimeter for survivors.

“It was them.” He whispered, unprompted.

“Hmm?” Negan was almost asleep and half-convinced he’d imagined the noise.

“It was them. It was them.” He just repeated the sentence, as if further clarification would be too painful.

“Them?”

Carl buried his face in the man’s chest, and Negan felt his shirt becoming damp with tears.

“Oh.” He finally understood, pulling the boy closer. “Them.”


	19. But The Things You Do For Love [Are Going To Come Back To You One By One]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second to last chapter. Thank you SO SO SO much to all y wonderful readers for your amazing and motivating support <3 <3

Jesus had dark circles under his eyes.  He was leaning against the front of the main building, yawning and rolling his shoulders with exhaustion as he briefed Negan on the status of the prisoner.

“All the stuff with his face,” The long haired man explained, “His nose, he was like that when we brought him in.  Doesn’t sound like he knows too much but Aaron and I have only tried talking so far.  We figured your guys would prefer to do any uh…” he searched for a palatable way to say it.  “Any… you know… heavy lifting, themselves.”

“Sounds like Christmas came early for Simon this year.” He tried to make a joke of it, then asked, “What’s he said so far?”

“Not much more than we already knew.  Nomads, claims there’s no more of his guys out there but I don’t know if I believe him, we sent a patrol to do rounds.  It’s hard to get him to calm down, he just keeps repeating the same stuff.  Almost feel bad for the kid.”

“Kid?” Negan said skeptically. 

“Not really a kid.  Twenty, maybe.”

“Scared me for a second.”

The incredulous look that Jesus shot him filled him with a stinging, embarrassed rage. He fought the urge to grab the smaller male by the throat and lift him off the ground until his feet stopped kicking.

Instead, he asked, “We know what the bone bag was about, yet?”

“Eugene thinks they’re remains, a baby’s.  The shit they’re preserved in is toxic.  Probably not cannibals.”

“That’s a relief.” But it wasn’t.  Cannibals were subhuman, easy to exterminate.  There was something about being unable to part with the remains of a child that made the register as people.  He forced it out of his mind, focused himself on the mental image of Carl chained naked and emaciated in the rain.  These weren’t people.  No matter how he decided to handle the one they were keeping in the stables, he told himself that he could never be as bad as them.  He was still human, and it wouldn’t be a bunch of flea-bitten ferals who stole that from him.

\---

 

Everybody knew Sophia would pull through once she complained that the pink rubber ribbons of scar tissue forming over her burn were ugly.  Her right hand would never open or close again, stuck shriveled into a boney talon, but the arm resisted infection and within a week Tara said for sure that she wouldn’t have to take it off.  Other than that, the worst injury on their side had been little Hershel, who suffered a sinus infection from smoke inhalation.

 

Sophia had gone back into the flaming nursery six times that night.  Negan was quick to declare her a hero.  He showered her with painkillers and used the incident to publicly excuse her mother for the trouble she’d caused him. He loosened his grip on Carl, went as far as to let the boy spend a few nights a week in her hospital bed.  She’d been having nightmares, she said, and Carl was her first friend, the only one who could calm her.  He wasn’t fooled, but the puppy love blooming between them was sort of sweet in an awkward, late in the game first crush kind of way.

 

Carl wouldn’t shut up about her.  She could shoot through the lip of a soda can without grazing the metal.  She could speak French.  She could, he suspected, communicate with the horses somehow.  Her breath smelled like fruit.  Her hair was made of silk and her skin softer than spider webs.  When she kissed him for the first time, he sat around for three days with a stupid drunk-looking grin. The hope in his eyes erased everything that Negan found appealing, and grew disinterested until all he felt was a passive, obligated affection, like one might feel toward a goldfish.

 

It made him feel better to think that his sudden restraint had come from watching Carl heal instead of from watching Rick decompose.  In reality, keeping Carl oblivious to the arrangement had been the real motivation behind letting the boy sleep at the hospital.  For the most part, Simon had the courtesy to keep it outside the house.  He would excuse himself to check the perimeter or record inventory, one hand knotted up in the fabric of Rick’s shirt, forcing the smaller man to stumble along beside him.  Rick never pulled away, eyes glassy and dull with resignation, and Negan found himself resenting the man’s compliance.  He wished it would be a big scene, Rick pleading and struggling as Simon hauled him through the streets.  That would draw the line again, the line between him and Simon where he could say decency stopped.  Instead he felt guilty, indescent.

 

\---

 

Sophia used her good arm to pull the trash can lid that she had tied to a short length of rope.  It glided through the snow, Carl’s weight barely denting the powder.  In the apron of her dress, she concealed a long bread knife from her mother’s kitchen.  She was the only one who could help him, he’d convinced her.  The words came through tears, “We have to.  We have to kill him.”  That was all the persuasion she’d needed.

 

The decision hadn’t been made in anger.  The opposite, in fact; when he learned it was Mark being held in the stables, he’d felt nothing but mercy.  This cycle was going to end.  He’d overheard talk between Simon and some of the Saviors at the outpost- Negan was going to let them take him back to the sanctuary once the snow melted.  They were through interrogating him.  He figured they had been for a while, at least since he heard Negan berating his second-in-command out in front of the main building.

_ “What’s he gonna tell us now, you sick fuck!?” _

He was gesturing exaggeratedly, holding the fistful of teeth that the man had presented him with.  That’s when Carl knew he couldn’t let it go any further.

 

The moonlight bounced off the tin roof of the stable, blindingly bright.

“Have you ever killed a real person?” He asked her.

She nodded.

“It’s easy, not like walkers. You don’t need to get the brain.”


	20. When The Scum Begins To Circle The Drain [Everybody Loves A Winner]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW this has been a journey to write. Thank you so much to everybody who supported me and inspired me to keep going. Im not sure what else to say other than that this was really cathartic to write and I was overwhelmed by the positive responses I received and love you all <3

****

Mark hadn’t reacted to Carl’s voice.  Or, if he had, there was so little of him left that the recognition wasn’t recognizable.  He had to have known, at least, that there were other people in the room.  He flinched when the door opened, wilted at the momentary change in the light, but he didn’t turn his head toward Carl’s whispering voice.  The only other response was a short, surprised noise when Sophia grabbed his greasy blonde hair to yank his head back and move the blade across his neck like she’d done hundreds of times to livestock.  

 

Now, his eyes were obscured by an icy fog and he snapped, toothless and gummy like a turtle.  His bound hands rubbed rope through his unfeeling skin until only the bone held the restraints.  A wet whistling sounded through the gap in his throat.

 

Sophia wanted to leave him like that.  It should have been easy to.  He tried to remember where they’d left it, with Mark just like the rest of them.  Something in him argued,  _ but maybe he hadn’t been _ .

“He’d leave you.”

But, then again, maybe not.  Maybe Carl had left him.   Hadn’t that been where it all went wrong?

Or maybe it was because he knew Mark would leave him, and he had to be better, like that was the only way to really get back at him.

 

Before they could open their mouths to debate it, a shot rang out.

 

\---

 

Sophia was trying to calm the spooked horses.  Simon kept his gun pointed at her, words running together and a bottle of gin still in his free hand.

“-like you try, like you try to get under my skin-”

His radio crackled with static.

“Soon as he fuckin’ gets here Im gonna ask him flat out...”  He paused to unclip the radio and bark a confirmation of their location. “Gonna ask him which of you dumb bastards he’s sending back with me as a replacement.”

Simon took another swig off the bottle and glowered at Carl.

“Maybe I’ll get to see if you’re as tight as your Daddy.”

Carl finally looked away from Mark’s shattered head to blink at the towering man, face slack with something too knowing to be confusion; denial.  

\---

 

Carl clung, sobbing, to Negan’s leg when he entered the stables.  

“I couldn’t… not like me… made him like me…” Incoherent fragments.  

Rick tried to comfort carl, clumsy and awkward.  He only held tighter to the denim of Negan’s worn-out jeans.  

He dismissed Sophia, mumbling something about the gunshots and the nursery.

“C’mon, pull it together.” But he pulled Carl closer instead of shoving him off.  A gloved hand ran through the overgrown fall of hair.  

“I couldn’t-” He apologized, nasally and spit-wet. “I couldn’t let him be like me.”

The words hooked something in Negan’s throat as they passed through him.

_ ‘Like me.’ _

Spoken out loud, it became a material thing, it took up a hundred times as much space as was in the rickety building.  

_ ‘Like me.’ _

The body on the ground was stripped and twisted and not only not human, but something that hadn’t been human for a long time.

_ ‘Like me.’ _

That first beer-numb kiss.  Those nights when the small shaking body beside him pushed against the weight of a blanket in spite of the cold.  The still that fell over him, That black void that became him, so empty of resistance that it looked like cooperation.

And maybe that’s why it never felt as bad as it should have, because that’s how it had been for so long.  It was like that with the settlements the Saviors protected.  Itd been like that with the wives.  It never felt like he was stealing anything when he didn’t have to break a lock to get it.

“Radio the guys.” He ordered Simon absently, not looking over his shoulder back at him.

“We’re just gonna-”

“Now.”

“Figures.  Wanna give me and the sheriff 20 minutes or so to say our goodbyes before we shift that moral goal post back into place?”  Behind the joke, his tone was bitter.

“Ten.”

“We’ll make due.”

 

\---

 

Carl didn’t realize he was being left at Hilltop until he was in the grass, eye-level with the open door of the transport, arms outstretched pathetically to be lifted inside.

“Got my money’s worth outta you.” Negan said coldly.

“Wait!” he grabbed the bed of the truck and struggled in vain to pull himself in.  “Don’t leave me!  Don’t leave, I’m sorry!”

This was about Mark, he reasoned.

“I’m sorry!  Please, I’m sorry!”  

The engine coughed, and Carl began to bargain desperately.

“Simon!  Simon can have me, just take me back!  Just don’t leave, I’m sorry!”

And that’s when Negan knew he was making the only choice he could live with.  He had thoroughly ruined the life of the grimes family, more damage than he could have ever hoped to inflict in a single season.

The boy, crying in the dirt, grew smaller in the distance and then vanished entirely.

 

\---

 

Some nights, Negan would awake with a bomb where his heart had been and mistake the city of legos for an intruder, a roamer, an assassin.  There were groggy mornings when a stray one would find it’s way underfoot and break skin.  On occasion, his eyes wandered the elaborate microcosm and he would remind himself to take it all apart, to send it with the next transport.

 

He could never bring himself to.


End file.
